Last update - 00:00 22/01/2008
Whining is the enemy
By Yoel Marcus
When Maariv hit the newsstands on Friday with banner headlines announcing a "special project," the paper wasn't promoting a raffle or prize-winning sweepstakes. The special was a feature on "bereavement and failure."
The families of 33 soldiers killed in the last 60 hours of the Second Lebanon War talked, page after page, about their pain and bitterness, under such subheads as: "Like lambs to the slaughter," "Toying with the lives of soldiers," "Left to die," "Sent out on a suicide mission." And all this, 10 days before the Winograd report comes out.
On a Channel 2 talk show this week, Dr. Motti Keidar, an expert on Middle Eastern affairs from Bar-Ilan University, accused the media of squeezing tears out of the bereaved families - tears that weaken the state and its ability to function. In my opinion, Maariv abused these families and exploited their grief. A cynic would say the motives were more financial than humanitarian.
Since the War of Independence, Israel has lost some 23,000 soldiers. They had parents and children, too. Bereavement is a constant companion to our neverending fight for survival. Civilians have also been killed, while riding buses and sitting in restaurants. Today, Natan Alterman's immortal poem declaring "we are the silver platter on which the Jewish state was delivered" would be chucked in the garbage.
The war of attrition being fought against us from Gaza, one of the hardest and unrelenting we have ever known, is specially calculated to push the families' "death in vain" button.
Israel's prime ministers have released thousands of prisoners and murderers under pressure from bereaved families. This piece of filth who calls himself Hassan Nasrallah would never dare to announce to the world that he possessed the body parts of Israeli soldiers if he didn't know that the parents would start pushing and the government would cave in.
How did Yitzhak Rabin put it after the appalling prisoner swap known as the Jibril Deal, which set free some of the biggest murderers in return for a handful of soldiers kidnapped while daydreaming at their posts? "I couldn't bear the eyes of the parents." But the government today is adamant: "No negotiations over body parts." Just wait until the parents wake up.
I recently watched a 14-part American TV documentary called "The War." The series explored World War II from the perspective of people living in four American towns, and incorporated footage by military reporters who accompanied the troops. One of the most astonishing revelations was the number of American soldiers killed on the battlefield due to the blunders and poor judgment of arrogant generals and civilian leaders. Among them was a military maneuver in the Italian boot ordered by President Roosevelt himself that ended in the slaughter of some of "America's finest."
But when their parents back home, working in factories revamped for military production, received the standard telegram informing them of their sons' death, they continued to work. They didn't hold rallies to weep and wail. The only murmur of protest was in Alabama, for allowing blacks to work in factories set aside for whites. Throughout the series, not a single bereaved parent lashed out at the government for sending his or her son on a suicide mission.
When a newspaper goads parents into crying their hearts out on its pages, and political hacks hitch a ride on bereavement, inciting families of fallen soldiers to demonstrate before they know what the Winograd report says, they are exposing our Achilles' heel. National whimpering becomes a form of collaboration with the enemy.
Not only bereaved families are gearing up for the Winograd report. Government ministers and other bigwigs who voted in favor of the war will be marching to Rabin Square alongside the parents. The most galling (in my eyes, at least), is Shaul Mofaz, who claims he warned Ehud Olmert and even asked him "What are you going to say to the families of the soldiers who get killed?"
Nice question. So why did he vote yes? As defense minister and a former chief of staff, he was a partner to the army's lack of preparedness. He and Moshe Ya'alon were the fathers of the "let the rockets rust" approach. What they let rust was the reserves. And he has the nerve to think that he can profit politically from the Winograd report.
Israel is in the midst of talks that could lead to an accord with the Palestinians on the one hand, and a war of attrition with Hamas on the other. This is hardly the time for early elections or for toppling the government and throwing the country into a state of political chaos.
If the Winograd report decides outright that the prime minister has to go and he refuses, that's when you take to the streets. Being the parent of a fallen soldier doesn't put you on a higher legal and political footing than anyone else.